Chicken, beef burger patties, sausage patties, onions, mushrooms, salmon, and other meat, fish, poultry and vegetable products are often precooked in continuous linear impingement ovens or convection ovens prior to being sold to restaurants, food services, supermarkets, or consumers. However, the precooked products produced by these continuous industrial ovens typically lack the color, appearance, taste, and other characteristics of products which are grilled or cooked at home or at a restaurant from scratch.
In an attempt to address this problem, continuous apparatuses for searing and/or branding the surface of the product are sometimes used upstream of the continuous cooking oven. Such apparatuses typically comprise: (a) a direct flame or infrared searing section which browns, chars, and/or seals the product surface and/or (b) a rotary brander which contacts the product to leave branded stripes on the product surface which are intended to resemble grill marks. A continuous apparatus which both sears and brands the product surface is sometimes referred to in the art as a flame grill system.
The searing section of a brander/searer apparatus will typically comprise: (a) a series of upper searing burners (e.g., blue ribbon flame burners or gas infrared burners), each of which extends laterally across the top of the product conveyor belt for discharging heat (preferably flame) downwardly onto the top of the product and (b) a series of lower searing burners, each of which extends laterally beneath the conveyor for discharging heat (preferably flame) upwardly onto the bottom of the product.
Heretofore, the focus of the searing section has simply been the direct application of high intensity heat (typically flame at 1000°-2000° F. or more) to the surfaces of the product as the product is briefly positioned below or above each searing burner. When the product is directly exposed to such heat as it passes beneath or over a searing burner, the temperature of the immediate outer surface of the product can reach as much as 550° F. or more. Different surface finishes can be produced to some degree in the searing section by changing the number, angle, height, and/or energy output of the burner(s). Alternatively, or in addition, the degree or nature of the surface finish can be altered by adjusting the belt speed in order to increase or decrease the product residence and exposure time below or beneath each burner.
The brander/searer apparatus and method heretofore used in the art therefore differ significantly from the apparatus and method provided by and used in my invention as discussed below. Because the prior art searers have, for obvious reasons, simply focused on the application of the high heat burner flames to the product, which, by itself, already produces an outermost surface temperature of 550° F. and above, no emphasis or attention has been given, nor has it been apparent that any benefit would be obtained by, retaining any particular amount of the searing/branding vapor product within the burner/searer housing or by otherwise increasing and controlling the temperature of the accumulated vapor product in the housing. Rather, concerning the vapor product produced in the high heat searing/branding process, the emphasis heretofore has simply been on ensuring that the product vapor will always be permitted to flow out of the apparatus in a sufficiently expeditious manner to guarantee that no overheating of the equipment will ever be allowed to occur and to minimize vapor flow out of the conveyor inlet and outlet openings.
The branding section of the prior art brander/searer apparatus typically houses a rotary branding system comprising: a rotating shaft which extends laterally over the product conveyor; a series of side-by-side fixed branding rings or “free-floating” branding rings which are retained on the rotating shaft such that the series of rings extends laterally across the width of the product conveyor; spacers which are optionally installed between adjacent pairs of any free-floating rings such that the spacers keep the branding rings in proper spaced alignment but the spacers do not contact the food product; one or more heating elements (typically at least one blue ribbon flame burner) which preferably heat the metal branding rings sufficiently to cause them to glow cherry red; and a motor or other device or system which drives the rotation of the rotating shaft. As the food product is conveyed beneath the brander, the hot branding rings contact the surface of the product and leave branded stripes intended to resemble grill marks.
Unfortunately, the current brander/searer apparatuses and the current systems in which they are used have many significant shortcomings and deficiencies. For example, the branded stripes, color, and highlights produced on the product surface by the continuous brander/searer apparatuses and methods currently used in the art do not sufficiently resemble authentic grill marks, color, and highlights as would be produced by a home grill. Rather, the branded stripes have an appearance which is commonly described as resembling painted tattoo marks and the color and degree of darkness produced between the stripes are typically too light and/or otherwise unauthentic. Also, each individual product piece produced by a current brander/searer apparatus and method will typically have essentially the same stripe pattern and appearance as the next.
Moreover, for these and further reasons, the existing systems employed in the industry comprising a continuous industrial branding and/or searing apparatus followed by a continuous industrial cooking oven also have not been effective for producing cooked products having the same flavor, color, and highlights as products grilled or cooked from scratch at home or in restaurants. In addition to the deficiencies of the branding/searing stage of the prior art apparatuses and methods as discussed above, the product is also deprived in the oven cooking stage of the beneficial flavor development processes which otherwise occur when the product is cooked entirely from scratch in a single, non-continuous piece of equipment as all of the product's own fats and juices evaporate and caramelize around it.
Also, a further important shortcoming of the systems currently used in the art for continuously searing, branding, and then cooking food products is that they consume an undesirably excessive amount of energy. In addition to the comparatively intense heating requirements of the brander/searer apparatus, the oven apparatus employed in the cooking stage must also be independently heated for cooking the interior of the product.